The complexity of fairness : how social enterprises manage different logics in their supply chains

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HE COMPLEXITY OF FAIRNESS

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NTERPRISES MANAGE DIFFERENT LOGICS

IN THEIR SUPPLY CHAINS

Master Thesis Version: Final

Student name: Ludovica Lanaro Student number: 11386355 Date of submission: 23 June 2017 Supervisor: Mrs. Francesca Ciulli Second reader: Mr. Johan Lindeque

Statement of originality

This document is written by Ludovica Lanaro who declares to take full responsibility

for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in

this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text

and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and

Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for

the contents.

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1. Introduction ... 1

2. Literature review ... 4

2.1 Social Enterprise ... 4

2.1.1 Definition of SE ... 4

2.1.2 Managing multiple logics ... 8

2.2 International Supply Chain management and Sustainability ... 10

2.2.1 Defining Supply Chain Management and its activities ... 10

2.2.2 International Supply Chain ... 12

2.2.3 Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) ... 15

3. Theoretical Framework ... 17 4. Methodology ... 19 4.1 Research design ... 19 4.2 Case Selection ... 20 4.2.1 SeeMe ... 21 4.2.2 Cred Jewellery ... 21 4.2.3 Conscious Step ... 22

4.2.4 Tommy and Lottie ... 22

4.3 Data Collection ... 23 4.4 Data analysis ... 24 5. Results ... 27 5.1 Within-Case Results ... 27 5.1.1 SeeMe ... 27 5.1.2 Cred Jewellery ... 30 5.1.3 Conscious Step ... 33

5.1.4 Tommy and Lottie ... 35

5.2 Cross-case analysis ... 37

6. Discussion ... 45

6.1 Findings ... 45

6.2 Theoretical and managerial contributions ... 49

6.3 Limitations of this study and suggestions for future research ... 50

7. Conclusion ... 51

References ... 53

Appendix ... 62

SeeMe Interview ... 62

Cred Jewellery Interview ... 68

Conscious Step Interview ... 76

Tommy and Lottie Interview – Supply Chain Agent ... 81

Tommy and Lottie Interview – Founder ... 84

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Table 1: SEs overview ... 23

Table 2: Interviews details ... 24

Table 3: Themes coded ... 26

Table 4: Overview of the strategies adopted by the SEs in each SCM stage ... 44

Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Mrs. Ciulli, who has always assisted me with patience and constructive feedbacks during the entire research process. Secondly, I would like to thank all the interviewees - Caterina Occhio (CEO of SeeMe), Alan Frampton (owner of Cred Jewellery), Prashant Mehta (co-founder of Conscious Step), Basak Kartal (supply chain agent for Tommy and Lottie) and Katie Carr (founder of Tommy and Lottie) - who have kindly accepted to assist me with their knowledge and time and who have shared with me their experience in the field of the social entrepreneurship. In particular, I would like to thank Mr. Frampton, whose passion and commitment in the Fair Trade, made me believe that fairness in business is possible and that it has the potential of bringing concrete positive social and environmental impacts. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family, that has always supported me despite the geographical distance, and my friends, without whom this Master’s program would have not been the same.

Abstract

Despite many studies have already examined the nature of Social Enterprises and their ability in managing all their diverse inner institutional logics, yet there is still a lack of researches about how social enterprises balance social and environmental goals with the economic ones in the management of their international supply chain. In order to address this shortcoming in the extant literature, a multiple case study of four social enterprises has been conducted, with the aim of exploring which is the most common strategy applied by these kind of organizations. The findings of this exploratory study supported Pache and Santos’ conclusion (2013) and suggested that selective coupling is the most chosen strategy. However, compromising is also sometimes taken into consideration to adjust the social/environmental objectives with the financial ones during each stage of the supply chain management, while decoupling has strongly been rejected by all the organizations here examined. These results will support social enterprises’ managers in their decision-making processes while at the same time they give contribution to the literature, also suggesting long-term collaborations with third parties.

Keywords:Social Enterprises - Institutional logics - Developing countries – Sustainable Supply Chain - Supply chain management - Selective coupling - Compromising – Decoupling

1. I

NTRODUCTION

Still nowadays it is difficult to find among many organizations the match between doing business and being sustainable. The most common aim for firms is gaining profit with the smallest costs, while the sustainable perspective usually comes only after this achievement.

The path to sustainability is surely not easy to follow. As outlined by Asswad et al. (2016), organizations encounter several barriers in their journey towards sustainability. First of all, the value of new sustainable materials is not immediately visible (Asswad et al., 2016). In addition, more energy efficient technologies are often neglected and companies keep using cheaper technologies and energy sources, although they have a negative impact on the environment. Moreover, waste is seen as a problem, but implementing a new way to manage it is not easy. Furthermore, changes towards sustainability are expensive, require time and also include risks: the substitution of resources with renewables and the integration of natural processes into the business model are processes that cannot be implemented within a short time period. In addition, organizations are also often constraints to their path dependency. This means that it is difficult for them to shift from the strategies, ideas and business models, which have always helped them achieve success and that have shaped their way to approach business over the years, to other new, unexplored ones (Sydow et al., 2009).

Going green has always been perceived by firms as an increase in efforts and costs without an immediate return of financial benefits, which then would result in weakening their competitiveness (Nidumolu et al., 2009). Furthermore, firms are required to re-think about the ways they are doing products and developing technologies, processes, and business models. However, only with this new perspective organizations can shift towards sustainability. According to Nidumolu et al. (2009), this change involves different steps: build sustainable value chains; design sustainable products and services; develop new Business Models and create next-practice platforms. In their journey towards sustainability, companies need to focus not only on their singular and internal production, e.g. to reach a greater energy efficiency or to reduce companies’ dependence on unsustainable materials in

their operations, but they should pay attention also to the entire product life cycle, and thus investigate more, for instance, on what kind of raw materials they use, where these come from, how the work is done there and so on (Klöpffer, 2008). Yet, still nowadays most businesses decide to act independently when it comes to recycling, reuse and repair activities.

The starting point to bring a substantial change in the way of doing business, considering also the social and environmental consequences, is the Supply Chain. However, under these circumstances, organizations face information uncertainty, evolving decision parameters and changing decision boundaries, which brings them to operate in a dynamic environment without a clear road map (Wu and Pagel, 2011).

A critical factor that hampers firms in the pursuit of sustainability is then the choice between a more profitable business and a more conscious one. Two are the potential solutions to this problem: considering the two aspects as trade-offs, thus choosing profit since sustainability may constrain the business, or completely re-thinking the business model of the company and try to pursue a win-win approach (Santos et al., 2015). The latter is the option chosen by Social Enterprises.

Social Enterprises (SEs), often also called Social businesses hybrids, are “organizations that run commercial operations with the goal of addressing a societal problem, thus adopting a social or environmental mission” (Santos et al., 2015: 37). Despite being a conscious way to conduct business, yet SEs often have difficulties in matching the environmental/social logic with the commercial one. Research has shown that multiple institutional logics often co-exist within organizations (Reay and Hinings, 2005; Marquis and Lounsbury, 2007), and that these multiple logics might impose different, and potentially conflicting, demands on organizations (D’Aunno et al., 1991; Oliver, 1991). Dealing with multiple institutional logics is already challenging for common firms because it is likely to trigger internal tensions that might eventually generate conflicts among the stakeholders, who are ultimately the ones who enact the logics (Zilber, 2002). However, this phenomenon is even more relevant in the case of hybrid organizations because, unlike organizations that incarnate existing organizational archetypes, they have more difficulties in relying on models for handling the tension

between the logics they combine (Battilana and Dorado 2010). Moreover, while common for-profit commercial organizations can decide whether to undertake conflicting actions that stems from different logics, and thus decide to deal with this complexity, different institutional logics coexist from the very beginning in SEs by definition (Santos et al., 2015). Thus, the management of the different, and potentially conflicting, institutional logics is intrinsic in the nature of social enterprises.

However, despite the challenges in building and especially sustaining social enterprises, many of them have already greatly improved the living conditions in developing countries thanks to their positive impact in those environments. Creating social value by helping target groups facing difficulties or acting in defence of the environment is always the main objective for social enterprises: they create jobs, increase income levels and improve the living standards, for example by making safer water and foods, health services and education more accessible (Sodhi and Tang, 2011). Social enterprises often establish their businesses in developing countries. Previous studies have found that hybrids can this way fight problems such as social isolation and accessibility issues in remote areas (O’Shaughnessy et al., 2011). However, in these contexts SEs also face many challenges. These barriers include for example organizational capacity issues, dispersed populations, which may ultimately obstacle the co-production with rural communities, limited markets and existing high levels of volunteering, that have been proved to reduce the willingness of rural citizens of co-produce with social enterprises (Steinerowski et al., 2008; Munoz et al., 2014).

Social Enterprises must then manage different logics while running their hybrids. Considering at the same time that sometimes to pursue sustainability organizations need to change their model while doing business, the best way to implement this approach is starting from the Supply Chain, which involves not only its building process, but also its development and more in general its management. However, there is a lack of studies that examine how social enterprises manage this coexistence of different logics in their supply chain management, especially when the supply chain is built and developed in developing countries. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is examining how Social Enterprises deal with their different logics when managing their supply chain.

How social enterprises which integrate multiple institutional logics (commercial, social and

environmental) deal with these logics in the management of their supply chain?

To answer this research question, a multiple case study research design has been adopted. Four cases have been selected and compared for this study. The cases have been selected based on three main criteria. First, the SEs have to operate in the same sector, i.e. the fashion industry. Second, the SEs need to have their main suppliers in a developing country. Third, the social enterprises need to be established organizations, operating for at least 4 years. The fashion industry is particularly interesting and relevant for this research, since in this sector sustainability has considerably increased in recent years, especially in Europe where there is a considerable amount of sustainability-conscious consumers and organizations (Choi et al., 2014) and because the supply chains of the firm in this industry are often situated in developing countries.

This paper is then divided into five sections. Following the introduction, the second section offers a brief summary of the literature related to Social Enterprises and Supply Chain Management. The third section develops the theoretical framework which identifies the main strategies that are usually considered helpful for SEs dealing with multiple logics and that this study will apply also to explore the supply chain management. The fourth section is dedicated to the methodology used for the research. The fifth section presents the research findings. The sixth section offers a discussion of the results of the research, focusing on the proposition, and their implications for theory and for practice, with a focus also on the potential limitations of this study. Finally, a conclusion is drawn in the last section.

2. L

ITERATURE REVIEW

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2.1.1 Definition of SE

The distinction between organizations that exclusively operate for the market and those that also take into consideration the context in which they act is not so clear cut anymore. Nowadays many

different typologies of organizations can be found and an interesting example is represented by social businesses hybrids, often called Social Enterprises (SEs) (Santos et al., 2015). There is no precise and consistent usage of the term Social Enterprise. Dees (1998; 4) has defined social entrepreneurs as those who “play the role of change agents in the social sector, by adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value), recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission, engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning, acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand, and exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created”.

According to Santos et al. (2015), SEs implement a unique strategy, where the starting point is addressing a societal problem and the tool through which they achieve that issue is running commercial operations. Thus, this model adopts a social or environmental mission from the very beginning. This is also the definition that will be considered in this study.

Social business hybrids then use commercial means to achieve a social and/or environmental mission in the attempt of matching profit with “doing good”, but this unique and new way of running business makes it difficult to manage such an enterprise. Following a social mission together with at the same time an economic one can result difficult to maintain, because resources and energies have to be allocated for the two of them and often one may be neglected in favour of the other. The relation between the social and economic mission has in fact been proved to be significantly negative: higher levels of social mission imply lower levels of economic mission and vice versa (Stevens et al., 2015). In keeping with this view, Santos et al. (2015) state that hybrids are fragile organizations, highlighting how they are often subjected to internal tensions and mission drift, due to the incompatible nature of the goals they hold, and consequently financial sustainability is not always guaranteed. Some of these enterprises may prioritize social performance over financial performance, failing to build a business model that ensures the financial sustainability of the organization; some others may instead choose to focus more on the financial performance rather than on the social one and this may drift them from their core social mission.

Reaching a balance between the social mission and the financial goal is not easy for SEs, also because often these two dimensions are represented by different stakeholders. Sometimes, the people who benefit from the social enterprises’ activity (i.e., the beneficiaries) are also simultaneously its customers. However, there are also hybrids that serve beneficiaries and customers who are part of distinct groups and therefore have different needs and demands. As Hockerts (2015) explained in his study, hybrids organizations can be distinguished in different typologies, where beneficiaries do not always play the role of customers as well. According to Hockerts (2015), three are the main SEs’ typologies: WISE Hybrids, BOP Hybrids and Fair Trade Hybrids. The aim of Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs) is that of bringing individuals who have been excluded from the labor market back into employment. These employees can therefore receive an income from a productive activity, form their work, and not from government support. This model is particularly common in developed countries (Hockerts, 2015), even though it can be applied also in developing countries. In WISE hybrids, the beneficiaries are thus the employees who are hired by the organization, while the customers are the ones who will support the organization thanks to the purchases of the hybrids’ production. Thus, in this model the beneficiaries of the SE’s activity and its customers are memebers of different groups. However, customers and beneficiaries of social enterprises can also be represented by the same target group. This is the case of the Bottom Of the Pyramid (BOP) hybrids. The aim of BOP hybrids is to “serve BOP customers with affordable quality products” (Hockerts, 2015: 89). This type of SE provides essential products and services, such as health, transportation, drinking water, and finance, at a cheap price to poor customers who otherwise would not have access to them (Hockerts, 2015). Therefore, in this model the SE’s customers and beneficiaries are represented by the same group. Finally, Hockerts (2015) identified also a third model of social enterprises where the beneficiaries are represented by the suppliers of raw materials and the customers are the clients who will buy the final product made with those raw materials. This model is called the “Fair Trade Hybrid” and aims to create income for poor marginalized suppliers and improve their

living standards by charging premiums to conscientious consumers in developed countries (Hockerts, 2015). Again, beneficiaries and customers are part of different groups.

Not only Hockerts (2015) has highlighted this particular feature of the social enterprises. In their study, in fact, Santos et al. (2015) identified different typologies of SEs which again showed that beneficiaries and customers are not always represented by the same group. As explained in their paper (Santos et al., 2015), four main types of social business hybrid can be identified: Market Hybrids, Blending Hybrids, Bridging Hybrids, and Coupling Hybrids. These kinds of SEs differ for the level of contingent value spillovers and for the degree of overlap between clients and beneficiaries, and consequently they present different features and challenges. In Market Hybrids beneficiaries are also the clients who pay for a product or service for which the value spillovers happen automatically without any additional interventions. Blending Hybrids are similar to the previous one, despite from the fact that they need to add also some interventions to produce positive spillovers. A complete different model is the one of Bridging Hybrids since clients and beneficiaries are part of different groups, so the organization has the responsibility of bridging the needs and resources of both groups. Finally, Coupling Hybrids also have clients and beneficiaries that are different but, unlike the previous model, most value spillovers do not happen automatically, but require distinct social interventions that are not included in the provision of their core commercial activity.

Hybrid organizations then have also to deal with multiple and various stakeholders, thus they often have to cope with diverging interests: the ones of the beneficiaries targeted by their social mission and those of their funders or investors. For some organizations, the activities that serve the beneficiaries, and thus that serve to achieve the social mission, are separate from those that aim to satisfy the customers and thereby generate revenue; for others, they are the same. Battilana et al. (2012) distinguished these two typologies of hybrids respectively into differentiated hybrids (DH) and integrated hybrids (IH), anticipating Santos et al. (2015)’s distinction.

Some SEs are then able to break the traditional customer-beneficiary dichotomy by providing products and services that, when consumed, produce social value (Battilana et al., 2012): in this case

customers and beneficiaries may become indistinguishable. This kind of integration is powerful, because it resolves the tension between mission and growth (Battilana et al., 2012). However, hybrid entrepreneurs may not be able to combine customers and beneficiaries, thus they have to differentiate between the two of them. Such approach raises a number of challenges for hybrids that may end to make trade-offs between serving customers and beneficiaries.

As Battilana and Dorado (2010) stated in their paper, hybrid organizations have more difficulties in relying on any specific model for their businesses, so they are considered to be even riskier than usual new ventures, since they include the achievement of a balance between different institutional logics (Scott and Meyer, 1991).

2.1.2 Managing multiple logics

The nature of social enterprises comprises different goals (commercial as well as social and/or environmental). In these complex environments, organizations are therefore exposed to multiple institutional logics and consequently their activities differ in terms of which logic they refer to. Thornton and Ocasio (1999: 804) defined institutional logics as “socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs and rules”. According to Thornton and Ocasio’s definition (1999), institutional logics provide the formal and informal rules of action and interaction that guide and constrain organizations in accomplishing the tasks set. Institutional logics are of fundamental importance for every organization, since they provide rationales in order to reach goals and implement strategic actions (Greve and Zhang, 2017). Each institutional logic has a specific and consistent set of organizing principles. However, logics often tend to overlap and consequently actors have to confront and draw on multiple logics (Friedland and Alford, 1991).

Several organizations deal with multiple logics, since often they confront environments in which multiple institutional logics are present and thus they reflect these different logics in their structures and practices (Greenwood et al., 2011). Organizations deal with different logics with various strategies: in some cases, one logic can be so dominant that it eclipses other logics, while in other cases multiple logics are so similar that they blend to provide a single set of practices

(Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006). However, as mentioned by Thornton et al. (2012) the prevalence of particular logics within an organization, as well as the relationships between these logics, varies across time and across contexts. Besharov and Smith (2014) provided a framework to explain the heterogeneity in how multiple logics manifest within organizations. According to their model, different logics persist among organizations depending on the compatibility, that is the relationship, within each other, and their centrality, so how important and crucial each of them is for the core business of the company.

Typically, SEs deal with different institutional logics while running their business. The real challenge for this kind of organizations is then that of sustaining all their different goals simultaneously, without neglecting any of them. These logics in fact are not always compatible one to another (Greenwood et al., 2011) and this is exactly what makes hybrids face intense challenges, especially when they want to keep their multiple goals in the long term (Besharov and Smith, 2012). Pache and Santos (2013) examined three potential strategies that hybrids could adopt in order to achieve their different goals: decoupling, compromising and selective coupling. The first strategy, decoupling, consists in symbolically endorsing practices prescribed by one logic, while actually implementing practices promoted by another logic - often one that is more aligned with organizational goals (Pache and Santos 2013). Decoupling is mainly used in situations where a policy prescribed by external institutional referents conflicts with an institutionalized practice promoted internally by an organization’s members (Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2008; Greenwood and Hinings, 1996; Tilcsik, 2010). Despite not concretely pursuing all the multiple goals, this strategy enables to protect the organization’s legitimacy and chance of survival, as it prevents conflicts from escalating between internal and external institutional referents. Decoupling has been found to be the less preferred strategy that hybrid organizations could implement, because it requires that all organization members adhere to the same logic and are willing to pursue it, which is something that may not persist in the long term (Pache and Santos, 2013). Moreover, external referents may find out that the social

enterprise is not implementing the practices it claimed to follow with its policies (Pache and Santos, 2013). Thus, the hybrid would lose legitimacy and credibility.

Compromising is another way to face the competing logics (Kraatz and Block, 2008; Oliver, 1991). In contrast with the previous one, this strategy attempts to keep all its logics, balancing the different goals. Compromising strategies allow hybrid organizations to partially attend all their different logics, for example by conforming to the minimum standards of what is expected, avoiding the risk of losing the endorsement of any kind of actors (Pache and Santos, 2013). However, also this strategy is not feasible for hybrids organizations, especially in the long run: important institutional referents’ expectations may not be met in the long term (Pache and Santos, 2013). Moreover, compromising may lead to internal conflict between different logics-groups who could ask for a stricter adherence to their own logic (Pache and Santos, 2013).

Despite many studies have supported that for-profit organizations, under conditions of competing institutional demands, tend to choose either decoupling (Elsbach and Sutton, 1992; Fiss and Zajac, 2006; Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Westphal and Zajac, 2001) or compromising (Oliver, 1991; Rowan, 1982) as a strategy, in their study Pache and Santos (2013) found that this result is not confirmed in the case of hybrids, since their most used strategy was instead the selective coupling. Selective coupling refers to the “purposeful enactment of selected practices among a pool of competing alternatives” (Pache and Santos, 2013: 994), so it occurs when organizations combine competing logics by drawing on different elements of each of them. This strategy therefore consists in select elements from different logics and then combining all of them together. Opposite to decoupling and compromising, selective coupling allows social enterprises to better combine all their logics, therefore pursuing their social mission while still gaining profit from their business activity to obtain the financial resources needed to sustain the whole organization.

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When talking about enterprises, one of the focal aspects to analyse is the supply chain. The supply chain is defined as “a set of three or more entities (organizations or individuals) directly involved in the upstream and downstream flows of products, services, finances, and/or information from a source to a customer” (Mentzer et al., 2001: 4).

Supply chain involves managing the sourcing processes, which refer to suppliers’ selection, suppliers’ development and all other processes associated with a holistic supplier management (Schneider and Wallenburg, 2012). According to Lambert and Cooper (2000), three are the main topics that an organization needs to properly analyse when developing a supply chain. First, who the supply chain members will be. The members of a supply chain include all organizations with whom the focal company will interact, so it is of a great importance identifying which are the most relevant ones for the firm’s success. The identity of a supplier is even more important in the case of SEs, since its main aim is addressing a social issue and often this problem stems right in the suppliers’ selection. Secondly, another key aspect is deciding what processes should be linked with each of these key supply chain members. Finally, the level of integration and management to apply for each process link should be set properly.

Manufacturing firms have increasingly paid attention to their suppliers’ selection and assessment (Kannan and Tan, 2002). From the relationship with its suppliers, in fact, a company can increase its ability to innovate and improve its business (Ragatz et al. 1997). However, a greater dependence on suppliers results in an increased need of effectively managing suppliers (Kannan and Tan, 2002). Kannan and Tan (2002) identified three dimensions to manage the suppliers: (1) effective supplier selection; (2) innovative supplier development strategies; and (3) meaningful supplier performance assessment mechanisms. In their study, Kannan and Tan (2002) found that due date performance and quality were the most important supplier selection criteria, whereas quality, on-time delivery, response time, and service ranked as the most important ones for supplier assessment. Although these parameters may perfectly work for a classic manufacturing company, on the other hand this effectiveness may not occur also in the case of SEs. Given their mission of addressing a

social issue, SEs may then have different criteria in selecting and assessing their suppliers. Besides, one should also consider their simultaneous pursuit of different goals: the social and/or environmental with the commercial one. Thus, this feature may create another new scenario, but still the management literature has overlooked it, and thus a gap in the literature about this theme still exists. Another important topic to discuss in supply chain management is suppliers’ rewards and incentives. According to Slone at al. (2007), providing rewards encourages suppliers and employees to support the supply chain goals. This strategy should be applied to make all the organizations pursuing the same shared goals (Slone at al., 2007). However, there still not much information about whether SEs agree and implement this approach or apply another method to make the pursuit of different goals possible.

Two interesting trends about supply chain are: the internationalization of the supply chain and its attempts towards sustainability.

2.2.2 International Supply Chain

During the last decades of the twentieth century supply chains have become more and more international (Taylor, 1997; Dornier et al., 1998). Supply chain management is thus not just a domestic phenomenon and its globalization imposes new challenges for its managers (Meixell and Gargeya, 2005). Typically, supply chain design problems include decisions regarding the number and location of production facilities, the amount of capacity at each facility, the assignment of each market region to one or more locations, and supplier selection (Chopra and Meindl, 2004).

According to Ferdows (1997), manufacturers typically set up foreign factories due to reduced labour, capital and logistics costs of foreign markets, which can be considered as tangible benefits and that are easy to measure. However, also intangible benefits can be identified among the advantages of an international supply chain, which on the other hand are more difficult to measure. These is, for example, the learning from foreign research centres, customers and suppliers (Ferdows, 1997). MacCormack et al. (1994) stated that these benefits accrue due to access to overseas markets, organizational learning through close proximity to customers, and improved reliability of suppliers

because of close proximity with them, which would enable the implementation of a Just In Time system, where the resources are available just at the right moment. Overall then, the main reasons that push a firm to internationalize its supply chain are those of reducing the production costs, increasing the revenues, accessing overseas markets, and exploiting other intangible benefits such as organizational learning and suppliers’ reliability (Meixell and Gargeya, 2005).

However, all these advantages do not come without obstacles and the international supply chains are more difficult to manage than the domestic ones (MacCarthy and Atthirawong, 2003). When internationalizing a supply chain, increased transportation costs given by geographical distances and less effectiveness of business processes due to different local cultures, languages, and practices are some of the obstacles that a company may encounter (Meixell and Gargeya, 2005). Other difficulties are risks such as variability and uncertainty in currency exchange rates, economic and political instability, and changes in the regulatory environment (Dornier et al., 1998).

The reasons that push towards the internationalization of the supply chain may be different for a SE and the obstacles encountered during this same journey may also be faced in a different way by hybrids compared to commercial companies. Although the nature of international social entrepreneurship continues to grow, yet only few researchers have studied the phenomenon of how entrepreneurs select particular global social causes and how they create their ventures around these international opportunities (Zahra et al., 2008). There is also still a lack in knowing what is the rationale for the emergence of new international social ventures or the timing and scope of their international operations (Zahra et al., 2008).

According to Zahra et al. (2008), four are the key factors which fuel the internationalization of social entrepreneurship: global wealth disparity; the Corporate Social Responsibility movement; market, institutional, and state failures and finally technological advances and shared responsibility. The objective pursued by SEs in the internationalization of their business consists then in creating wealth (Hitt et al., 2001) and addressing persistent social problems (Zahra, Ireland, and Hitt, 2000). The starting point for SEs which internationalize is still focused on their social mission, whereas the

typical benefits sought by commercial companies, such as for example the reduction of costs, are not taken into consideration.

Nonetheless, the context of development is important also for Social Enterprises. The growth of social enterprises in fact differs from the context they are embedded in (Chell et al., 2010) and depends on three main factors: demand side factors (i.e. public wanting services from social enterprises as customers); supply side factors (the supply of social entrepreneurs) and contextual and institutional factors impacting on the relation between the two (Spear, 2006).

The internationalization of SEs however does not occur only in terms of expansion in other markets, but it often involves also the adoption of an international supply chain. In fact, for example, two of the three hybrid models proposed by Hockerts’ in his study (2015) involve building an international supply chain. WISE hybrids employ workers who have been excluded from the labour market. This is often the case of social enterprises which have their production in developing countries. However, once again the reasons that push hybrids to produce in such contexts are once again not related to a reduction of costs, but on the aim of addressing a social mission. Whenever social enterprises implement the WISE hybrid model in a foreign country that differs from the home country, this choice makes the supply chain become international. Even closer to the concept of international supply chain is Hockerts’ (2015) model of the Fair Trade hybrids, where poor marginalized suppliers are helped in order not to be exploited and to improve their living standards. In this case, the starting point of the hybrids’ supply chain is represented by the suppliers who often are based in poor developing countries. Again, this makes the supply chain international. Therefore, the internationalization of SEs does not really depend on the expansion of their markets, but more on where they produce and from which places they gather the resources needed for their production.

Many business externalities that arise from organizations’ production have negative impacts on the environment. For example, excess packaging of products or greenhouse gases have relevant negative effects on the environment (Kramer and Porter, 2011) and the internationalization of companies does not bring to a solution to the problem. Another popular topic often discussed is the

common unethical work conditions that international supply chains frequently involve. Treatment of workers, for example, has always been an important ethical issue in western business, and in recent years the trend of the globalization has brought the attention to more specific issues such as low wages, sweatshops, labour practices, and working conditions (Brammer et al. 2011).

2.2.3 Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM)

As mentioned in the previous section, the internalization of supply chains has implications for both social and environmental sustainability. It is consequently clear that supply chain managers have a great responsibility since they can impact, positively or negatively, environmental and social performance, through for example suppliers’ selection, suppliers’ development, location decisions, and packaging choices (Carter and Easton, 2011). Organizations, while running their business, often negatively impact both the environment and the society. For this reason, according to Carter and Easton (2011), nowadays organizations’ stakeholders are increasingly demanding that companies address and manage the environmental and social issues which are impacted by their operations. As a consequence, companies have tried to respond to this request with different solutions: one is the implementation of more CSR policies. Another solution has been managing the supply chain with a more sustainable lens. Hence, the concept of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) has emerged.

SSCM is defined as ‘‘the management of material, information and capital flows as well as cooperation among companies along the supply chain, while taking goals from all three dimensions of sustainable development, i.e., economic, environmental and social, into account which are derived from customer and stakeholder requirements’’ (Seuring and Müller, 2008: 1700). With a closer focus on each activity that characterizes the management of supply chains, Giunipero et al. (2012) defined SSCM as the extent to which supply management incorporates environmental, social, and economic value into the selection, evaluation and management of its supply base.

SSCM varies depending on the structure of the specific firm that it belongs to (Turker, Altuntas, 2014), but still, it always takes into account the idea of the triple bottom line. Historically, in fact,

supply managers have focused almost exclusively on the economic value when evaluating and selecting suppliers (Monczka et al., 2009). However, this view has recently changed and, as Closs et al. (2011) argued, sustainability should be taken into consideration across the entire supply chain.

Building a Sustainable Supply Chain (SSC), however, is not easy. According to Tay et al. (2015), the drivers in support of the implementation of a SSC are many and can be divided into internal drivers and external ones. Among the internal drivers, they mention having, first of all, top management commitment and a supportive culture towards sustainability in the SC. The involvement of employees is also important. SSCM is also benefited by adopting an Environmental Management System (EMS). Besides, developing capabilities in purchasing and supply functions is also crucial, and specifying a sustainable SCM strategy is beneficial too. Finally, it is also essential to ensure that the SSCM strategy is aligned with the corporate one. The external drivers, instead, come from a range of stakeholders. Large customers may influence smaller suppliers to meet SSCM practices and exert pressure in the supply chain. Besides, crucial are the collaborations with suppliers, Governments, NGOs and other investors.

On the other hand, Tay et al. (2015) highlighted also the barriers to build a SSC. One of the most important factor is the firm size, since larger companies are more likely to engage in SSCM (Hervani et al., 2005). The most common internal obstacles are: lack of supportive corporate structures and processes; lack of management commitment; reliance on traditional accounting methods, which do not report triple bottom results; lack of top management commitment. External barriers include instead: consumer desire for lower prices; competitive pressures; green washing. Besides, Government regulation can inhibit SSCM, as well as a lack of commitment amongst suppliers.

The purchasing function of an organization plays a relevant role in the achievement of sustainability goals (Tate et al., 2010) and this is of primarily importance because it is the very first step of any supply chain (Porter and Van der Linde, 1995), hence where everything starts. As a consequence, companies that aim to be sustainable need to start from their upstream supply chains and apply sustainability already in their sourcing (Tate et al., 2010). Pagell et al. (2010: 58) defined

sustainable sourcing as “managing all aspects of the upstream component of the supply chain to maximize triple bottom line performance”, which is in line with the requirements that Tate et al. (2010) entail for sustainable suppliers: (1) ability to provide good economic value at competitive costs, (2) meet high environmental standards, and (3) enforce the focal organization’s social values and standards.

Once again, to the author knowledge, no studies have been conducted on how SEs, and not commercial organizations, build their SCs and on the requirements needed for a proper sustainable sourcing.

3. T

HEORETICAL

F

RAMEWORK

In the previous section, the literature about Social Enterprises and the Supply Chain Management, has been examined. Social Enterprises are hybrid organizations that try to conciliate a remarkable involvement in bringing a relevant positive social impact with doing business. For this reason, this peculiar type of organizations always has to concurrently deal with different institutional logics: commercial, social and environmental. Managing simultaneously all of them is not easy, but at the same time it is a requirement for SEs, since they must achieve their social mission with their own financial strengths that stem from the run of their business. Thus, Pache and Santos (2013) proposed three different strategies (i.e. decoupling, compromising and selective coupling), to help them dealing with this crucial management issue and so to stay sustainable while running a commercial activity.

Environmental and social sustainability are difficult to achieve in the SC, even more when also the economic one need to be met. Although, the internationalization of supply chain is becoming a frequent phenomenon nowadays, the reasons that push towards it differ from the kind of organization: while commercial companies are internationalizing their supply chains to benefit from several economic advantages, SEs start from a different rationale which is addressing a social problem. Sustainable supply chains could be an effective starting point for SEs to solve the issue of managing different aims, as it would allow achieving sustainable goals together with the economic ones. Yet,

in order to be effective a SC must be properly built from the very beginning, starting from the sourcing and continuing with an accurate assessment of the suppliers. However, how SEs are able to deal with the different logics in their SCM is something that still requires further study. Thus, this paper aims to answer the following question: how social enterprises which integrate multiple institutional logics (commercial, social and environmental) deal with these logics in the management of their supply chain?

According to Pache and Santos’ research (2013), when dealing with different institutional logics, SEs apply one of these three main strategies: selective coupling, compromising or decoupling. Focusing on selective coupling, this strategy seems to be the most suitable one for hybrid organizations, since by definition it combines competing logics by drawing on different elements of each of them. Therefore, endorsing a combination of activities drawn from each logic would create opportunities for SEs to respond more creatively to the need of adjusting social goals with the economic ones. Pache and Santos’ study (2013) demonstrated that selective coupling is indeed the most preferred way of action. However, it is still unclear whether this strategy is applied to the whole business or only in specific stages. Knowing that the supply chain is the starting point to build a stable business, which is able to maintain at the same time different typologies of goals, it then results necessary to apply selective coupling in all the supply chain management steps, namely selection, assessment and reward. SEs in fact will tend to select, assess and reward their suppliers considering not only economic criteria, but also social and environmental ones.

Proposition 1: Selective coupling is the most chosen strategy by SEs in all the stages of supply chain management in developing countries.

Despite not allowing a complete achievement of all kinds of goal, compromising could also be seen as a valuable strategy that SEs would apply during their SCM. In fact, although SEs aim to attain all their goals simultaneously, this is doubtlessly a difficult objective to realize. During each step of SCM, hybrid organizations would then have to reduce one kind of goal in favour of the achievement of another, due to their temporary incompatibility. Therefore, in certain cases, hybrids

will have to decide most likely whether to be more economic or social/environmental sustainable, temporarily renouncing to one of the two.

Proposition 2: When selective coupling is not applicable, SEs tend to undertake a compromising strategy in all the stages of supply chain management in developing countries.

Finally, despite being mentioned as a potential solution to manage different institutional logics, as already highlighted by Pache and Santos (2013), decoupling cannot be considered as a SEs’ strategy. From its definition, in fact decoupling involves symbolically endorsing practices prescribed by one logic, while implementing practices promoted by another logic. Therefore, this approach is less likely to be applied in either steps of SCM. SEs in fact, for example, can focus either only on the social/environmental goals or on the economic one. However, this kind of approach is not feasible with hybrids, especially in the long term, for two main reasons: first, it would result in contradiction with the definition itself of SE, since hybrid organizations are enterprises who deal with and manage different institutional logics at the same time. Secondly, this strategy would not allow the SEs’ survival since they will either lose legitimacy or not have enough financial resources to sustain their businesses.

Proposition 3: Decoupling is less likely to be implemented in the management of the SEs’ supply chain in developing countries.

4. M

ETHODOLOGY

4.1

R

This explorative research aims to gain more insight into the different logics that coexist in SEs’ supply chains and how hybrids manage them in their supply chain. Therefore, first-hand information from SEs was needed and thus a qualitative research has been chosen. The qualitative research approach seeks to explore new phenomena that occur naturally in their environment and thus it was particularly suitable for this research (Rynes et al., 2004). Moreover, to properly answer the

“how” question of an exploratory research, Yin (2013) suggests that case study is the most suitable strategy.

A multiple-case study approach of four Social Enterprises has then been conducted in combination with semi-structured in-depth interviews. The case study approach has been chosen since it is a well-established research method in business studies and it helps understanding the dynamics present within each single scenario (Eisenhardt, 1989). Besides, case study offers the opportunity to look at the complex systems of organizations and examine how they have tried to develop a sustainable business model, considering also their social impact. Furthermore, a case study approach is especially appropriate when fresh insights or a novel perspective are needed, due to existing conflicting findings on a phenomenon (Eisenhardt, 1989), like in this study. Finally, case study strategy is the most used in exploratory research because it allows a complete understanding of the subjects and of the context within which the activities take place (Saunders, 2011). A multiple case study has been chosen because it allows to check the replication of the findings among the subjects taken into consideration (Eisenhardt, 1989). According to Yin (2003), multiple case studies allow either the prediction of a similar result (literal replication) or a contradicting result (theoretical replication). In this study, literal replication was assumed and similar findings among SEs were expected.

The study follows a deductive approach. This means that theoretical propositions have been set and then tested.

4.2

C

S

To analyse how Social Enterprises deal with their different logics in the management of their supply chain and sustain them over the years, four Social Enterprises have been examined, namely: SeeMe, Cred Jewellery, Conscious Step and Tommy and Lottie. The organisations here analysed all shared some characteristics: they are all social enterprises; they all come from the fashion industry (is it the textile or the jewellery one); all of them have their own brand; they all have the production based in developing countries, and one of their core sustainability issues is improving the workers’

lifestyles, respecting their working conditions and helping them achieving better education or more in general a better living. Finally, all these firms are also involved in protecting the environment, avoiding any negative impact. All these features make them organizations that have to deal with multiple conflicting typologies of goals: economic, social and environmental.

However, each of these SEs has its own characteristics and operates in specific areas, as explained in the following sub-sections (Table 1).

4.2.1 SeeMe

Founded in 2013 by the Italian Caterina Occhio, SeeMe is a fair trade certified luxury brand that produces heart shaped fashion accessories and combines Fashion with the Fair-Trade world. While its shop is located in the centre of Amsterdam, its producers are based in Tunisia, where women, often single mothers, who have suffered violence and were ostracized from their communities, are taught about the craft of jewellery making. The mission of SeeMe is that of securing a workplace for these women and a future for their families, while at the same time fostering their country's traditions, such as the ancient Tunisian techniques to produce jewellery. Furthermore, to be eco-friendlier and apply an approach that is more in line with the Circular Economy, SeeMe uses recycled silver for the production of its jewellery, aims to reduce the usage of plastic and employs more green materials to produce the boxes for their jewellery.

4.2.2 Cred Jewellery

Cred Jewellery is the first jewellery company that pays social premiums for Ecological Gold and it is a pioneer in ethical jewellery since 1996. With gold mining communities located both in South America and Africa, Cred Jewellery has the aim of creating a fashionable jewellery brand that does good by supporting and working with local mining communities. Two are the main goals for CRED: offering a complete transparency in their supply chain and investing time and money back into the livelihoods of their small-scale miners and communities, in order to ensure fairer wages, safer working conditions and improvements in healthcare, education and the surrounding environment.

Cred Jewellery also has always had a conscious look to the environment as well. Cred silver jewellery collections made before 2013 are made from 100% recycled sterling silver, since recycled silver was the best ethical alternative to Fair Trade silver available at the time. Besides, all cred platinum wedding rings and engagement rings are made from recycled platinum. There is not currently a source for Fair Trade platinum (as for Fair Trade gold). Therefore, the most ethical platinum is the recycled one.

4.2.3 Conscious Step

Conscious Step was created in 2013 and it is based in New York. Operating in the textile industry, this Social Enterprise has its cotton growing and sock manufacturing in the states of New Delhi and Kanpur, India, in order not only to benefit of India’s organic cotton expertise, but also to support small and marginal cotton farmers. Besides, their products are made using organic cotton and their entire supply chain is GOTS and Vegan certified. The crops are not treated with herbicides, insecticides, pesticides, and are not genetically modified. Organic growing systems maintain soil fertility, build biologically diverse agriculture, and use less water in order not to harm the environment and to be eco-friendlier.

4.2.4 Tommy and Lottie

Launched in March 2013, Tommy and Lottie is an online, UK based baby boutique and lifestyle brand, specialised in modern, unisex baby clothing. Tommy and Lottie works in the apparel industry and has suppliers based mainly in Tanzania and Bangladesh. The supply chain management is entrusted to a third party, Mantis World, even though the final decision about suppliers is still on Tommy and Lottie. Tommy and Lottie believes in sustainable and ethically made clothes that come from a place where people who make them are treated fairly, whether this is in Britain or in other parts of the world. Tommy and Lottie also cares about the environment. Thus, no harmful chemicals or dyes are used in any of the processes of the production and their cotton is certified Oeko Tex.

Besides, Tommy and Lottie aims to minimize the carbon footprint, and thus it seeks to maintain all the production processes in one single place, in order to reduce materials’ and products’ shifts.

Firm Year of foundation

Sector Based Country Supplier/s country/ies

SeeMe 2013 Jewellery The Netherlands Tunisia Cred Jewellery 1996 Jewellery UK South America

and Africa Conscious Step 2013 Textile USA India Tommy and

Lottie

2013 Textile UK Tanzania and Bangladesh

Table 1: SEs overview

4.3

D

C

The best way to collect data for this study would have been a triangulation approach, meaning that data should have been collected from different sources (Saunders and Lewis, 2012). In fact, by using this method of data collection in a case study the reliability of the findings would be enhanced and construct validity ensured (Lewis et al., 2007). However, in this study only primary data, namely interviews, have been collected. The collection of secondary data has not been implemented for two main reasons: first, SEs are small enterprises that can provide only a small amount of data. Second, the kind of information sought for this research cannot be extrapolated from secondary data. Consequently, only primary data have been collected. However, the lack of secondary sources limits the validity and reliability of the research, as data could have not been appropriately triangulated.

Primary data have been collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews. In-depth interviews are the most commonly used method in qualitative research (Saunders and Lewis, 2012), as they allow to collect much more detailed information on the subject studied compared to other data collection methods (Yin, 2009). However, in-depth interviewing has also disadvantages, since interviewees may give responses they think are appropriate but might not reveal the real coherences (Eisenhardt, 1989).

The interviews have been conducted between 5th _{May 2017 and 6}th _{June 2017 with the CEOs of the}

SEs analysed or with people in charge of managing the SEs’ supply chains (Table 2). In order of time, the interviews have been held with: Caterina Occhio, CEO of SeeMe; Alan Frampton, owner of Cred Jewellery; Prashant Mehta, co-founder of Conscious Step; Basak Kartal and Katie Carr, respectively, supply chain agent and founder of Tommy and Lottie. With the exception of the interview with Tommy and Lottie’s supply chain agent, Basak Kartal, all the other interviews have been conducted face-to-face or via Skype and audio-recorded, with the permission of the participants, for transcribing purposes: the audio-recordings in fact can reduce bias and increase accuracy (Saunders and Lewis, 2014). Due to a busy schedule, Tommy and Lottie’s agent could not schedule and thus participate in an interview, but still kindly answered the questions via email during May 2017. The data have been transcribed and analysed to investigate similar emerging themes. All the interviews’ transcripts are attached in the Appendix. Table 2 gives an overview of the interviews conducted for this research, specifying the name of the interviewees, their role in the social enterprise they work for, and the date in which each interview has been held.

SeeMe Cred Jewellery

Conscious Step

Tommy and Lottie Name of the interviewee Caterina Occhio Alan Frampton Prashant Mehta

Basak Kartal Katie Carr

Role of the

interviewee CEO Owner Co-founder Supply chain

agent

Founder

Date of the

interview 03-05-2017 23-05-2017 25-05-2017 - 06-06-2017

Table 2: Interviews details

4.4

D

Thematic coding, which involves coding and classifying data, has been used to analyse the data since it enabled to highlight the most important findings. The qualitative data analysis software, NVivo, was used to analyse the data. Nvivo is a computer-assisted tool which helps coding and

categorizing the collected qualitative data. As mentioned by Bazeley and Jackson (2013), the use of this software enables to efficiently manage the unstructured data. To analyse the collected data, all the interviews have been firstly transcribed and then organized in themes. To code the interviews, each step of the supply chain design, namely suppliers’ selection, suppliers’ assessment and suppliers’ reward/improvement, has been linked to the strategies mentioned by Pache and Santos (2013). These strategies are: decoupling, compromising and selective coupling. This method was used in order to understand which strategy is most common and beneficial for a social enterprise in managing the different institutional logics in its supply chain.

The selected SEs have been first separately analysed. Afterwards, cross-case differences and similarities in SEs patterns have been examined, as well as investigated in order to highlight if the strategy adopted shifted over time and whether the choice of the strategies converged or diverged across companies. The results of this analysis are presented in the following chapter. Before starting the analysis of each of the businesses, a table with the themes coded is presented (Table 3) to better understand which are the main strategies and supply chain management steps that have been taken into account to code the interviews of this research.

Table 3: Themes coded

Definition

Quote

Suppl

y

chai

n

m

anage

m

ent

st

ra

teg

ies

A strategy that selects and maintains at the same time elements of different logics.

“Hybrid organizations combine competing logics in a systemic fashion by selectively coupling, at the organizational level, intact elements drawn from each logic” (Pache and Santos, 2013: 973).

Compromising

A strategy that attends all the conflicting demands exerted by institutional referents, but only partially.

“Organizations are often confronted with conflicting institutional demands … Under such circumstances, organizations may attempt to balance, pacify, or bargain with external constituents” (Oliver, 1991: 153).

Decoupling

A strategy that claims to follow some kinds of conflicting demand at the same time, but that only symbolically adopts policies without concretely implementing all of them.

“Decoupling enables organizations to maintain standardized, legitimating, formal structures while their activities vary in response to practical considerations” (Meyer and Rowan, 1977: 357).

Suppl

y

chai

n

m

anage

m

ent

s

te

ps

suppliers.

Supplier selection is “the acquisition of required material, services and equipment for all types of business enterprises” (Weber et al.,1991: 2).

Suppliers’ assessment

Suppliers assessment consists in monitoring the suppliers in order to check whether they keep meeting the requirements agreed at the beginning of the relationship with the organization.

“…buyers need regularly to measure and monitor the performance of suppliers with respect to both tangible and intangible criteria … This type of feedback assists suppliers in undertaking remedial actions to improve their performance in order better to meet the demands of the buyer” (Talluri and Sarkis, 2002: 4259).

Suppliers’ reward

Supplier’s reward consists in giving rewards to the suppliers, such as price premiums, recognition, increased future businesses, or investments in training, in order to increase their productivity and keep them aligned to the agreed requirements.

“Supplier incentives motivate suppliers to improve by sending a message that improved performance is rewarded with increased business and preferred status for future business” (Krause et al., 2000: 49).

5. R

ESULTS

This chapter presents the findings obtained from the data analysis. First, each selected SEs will be singularly examined under the three supply chain management stages, namely suppliers’

selection, suppliers’ assessment and supplier’s reward and improvement, in order to investigate

which strategies organizations usually apply during their supply chain development. Afterwards, the across-case results section will combine the results found for each SE examined, in order to compare them and highlight the similarities and differences across companies, in the strategies chosen, and to study whether these alternatives converge to the choice of one common strategy or diverge across different strategy chosen by the companies.

5.1

W

-C

R

5.1.1 SeeMe

¨ Suppliers’ selection

SeeMe builds its suppliers’ selection on its mission, which consists in three main topics, as explained by Caterina Occhio (personal communication, 5th May 2017): “The three main principles are: creating work places for socially disadvantaged groups of people, in our case women; creating good looking products, which must not be an excuse to behave unfairly, and finally also producing economic value, financial value for all the people involved. A luxury that is good looking, fair and profitable”. The Supply Chain is then their starting point: “This is a path that one decides to undertake and it means starting from the beginning, because you have to build all the supply chain and all the value chain based on ethical principles” (Caterina Occhio, personal communication, 5th _{May 2017). To achieve}

its SE’s mission, SeeMe is experimenting a model of business called “Socially Integrated Management”. This system has its essence right in the suppliers’ selection, as all their products are manually made by women victim of violence. The model in fact stems from the implementation of a “positive discrimination” during the employment process of new workers, which entails employing only a certain kind of workers, in this case Tunisian women, often single mothers, who have suffered

violence and were ostracized from their communities. The organization offers to these new workers learning-by-doing jobs with professional Tunisian artisans, in order to learn the craft of the jewellery making, following ancient Tunisian techniques.

Whenever SeeMe needs new workers, the association they work with, “Amal”, send them three candidates. There is no job description provided, as they already know that the girls have no experience in the field. They first make interviews and then go for a trial period. The girls are not always employed, because the production still requires dexterity: “It has also happened that we didn’t employ one of the girls proposed us, because it is still a manual work: it’s a matter of aptitude and talent. It is still handicraft that requires precision” (Caterina Occhio, personal communication, 5th May 2017). The workers thus must prove to have also a certain dexterity in the craftsmanship: “On one hand our women have a positive discrimination …But on the other hand, they must have dexterity and an ethical code such that working is permitted” (Caterina Occhio, personal communication, 5th May 2017).

SeeMe has chosen to operate on a very local level, in order to create an authentic social integrated model. The authenticity of the model is reflected in all its components: the use of only local materials, the production made only with traditional local techniques and craftsmanship, and finally the positive discrimination that they apply towards a specific local group of people.

As mentioned, also the sourcing is local, since they buy all the necessary materials, such as silver and gold, in Tunisia, in order to create a local market. However, not all the resources needed are available in the local market. As a consequence, SeeMe either imports from abroad those materials that cannot be found in Tunisian markets, such as chains, or decides not to use certain materials, for example no jewellery made in Tunisia have precious stones as there it is not in the tradition of their jewellery culture. Again, due to the authenticity criterion precious stones can be found only in their jewellery that come from their production in Lebanon, since in that country is where the best diamond setters in the world, the Armenians, operate.